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Preserving a Theater Legacy in Westport

THE White Barn Theater in Westport, which last staged a production in 2002 but was once a haven for new writers and independent productions, is being sold. But in an agreement with the theater's owner, the Westport Country Playhouse will preserve and advance its legacy.

Lucille Lortel, later known as "the queen of Off Broadway," founded the White Barn in an old horse barn on her estate in 1947. After her death in 1999 at the age of 98, the Lucille Lortel Foundation in Manhattan inherited the theater and 18 acres on the Westport-Norwalk border.

Under an agreement reached in November between the Westport playhouse and the foundation, the foundation is giving the playhouse $2.5 million for renovations and future productions. In return, the playhouse's rehearsal hall and reception center will be named the Lucille Lortel White Barn Center and a museum commemorating the White Barn and Miss Lortel will be established there.

The agreement, which involved negotiations among the foundation, the playhouse and the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut, ends several years of uncertainty about the White Barn's fate. Under the agreement, the foundation can sell the theater and surrounding land.

Alison Harris, the executive director of the Westport playhouse, said both theaters had similar missions of producing summer shows and supporting new and innovative plays and writers. "They said they were most interested in continuing the legacy of the White Barn and was it possible for us to do projects that would support this legacy," Ms. Harris said.

The foundation will give the playhouse $2 million to help complete its $30 million renovation project and $500,000 to create opportunities at the playhouse for new playwrights, composers, directors and actors. The playhouse will receive the $500,000 in $50,000 increments each year for 10 years.

Dick Ticktin, the president of the Lortel foundation, said the trustees wanted to turn a dormant asset into an active one. Eliot Spitzer, New York's attorney general, and Richard Blumenthal, his counterpart in Connecticut, got involved to make sure that the terms of Miss Lortel's will were followed and that the foundation followed its bylaws.

Money from the sale will go into a White Barn fund that will be used to fulfill the Lortel Foundation's mission of supporting playwrights and theaters. Mr. Ticktin would not say how much the foundation would ask for the property, which he said would be put on the market soon.

The Norwalk Land Trust is raising money to buy the site for open space. Paul Littell, who oversees acquisitions for the trust, said he hopes the foundation will sell the property to the trust. Mr. Littell would not say how exactly how much the trust had offered but he did say that he expected it to cost several million.

In November, the land trust received a $450,000 state Open Space and Watershed Land Acquisition Grant toward the purchase of the White Barn property.

"Fairfield County land has become prohibitively expensive and is disappearing rapidly," Mr. Littell said. "A major parcel like 18 acres becomes available really once in a lifetime, and when it does, it presents a very important opportunity for public good."

Mr. Littell said the trust had been in touch with several theater groups in the state in the hope that they might want to purchase the theater and keep it operating, but none had enough money.

Joseph Juliano, the manager of operations for the New England Theater Conference in Hamden, said that the White Barn specialized in experimental productions. "Lucille's idea of theater was to really provide playwrights with opportunities to just experiment with their work," Mr. Juliano said.

He said it is difficult financially for other theaters to pursue that mission. "Lucille didn't run the place to make money," Mr. Juliano said. "She had the financial wherewithal to keep it going, the personal wealth."

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Mr. Ticktin said it was natural for the foundation to turn to the Westport Country Playhouse because Miss Lortel had worked with it in the past, including volunteering on a committee to find new subscribers.

Ms. Harris said that each year Westport playhouse executives will meet with the trustees of the Lortel Foundation to discuss the production, play or activity that the playhouse will finance with its $50,000 annual grant. The foundation has veto power if it believes the chosen project does not correspond to the White Barn mission.

"They don't just give us the money and we spend it as we wish," Ms. Harris said. "They have the opportunity to see it fulfills Lucille's legacy."

Tazewell Thompson, the artistic director of the playhouse, said the $50,000 will be used this year to support its production of "Jam and Spice," a musical tribute to Kurt Weill, who wrote "The Threepenny Opera" with Bertolt Brecht.

Marc Blitzstein's adaptation of "The Threepenny Opera" ran for seven years at the Theater de Lys in Greenwich Village. In 1955, the theater was a 24th anniversary gift to Miss Lortel from her husband, Louis Schweitzer, a chemical engineer who made his fortune manufacturing cigarette papers. The theater was renamed for her in 1981.

"Kurt Weill, the German Jewish son of a cantor who escaped Germany, was politically and socially savvy," Mr. Thompson said. "There was always in his music a tongue in cheek and wink at those in power."

Mr. Thompson said he was considering using the $50,000 grants to support a playwright in residence and to commission new plays focused on socially important issues like the environment.

Mr. Thompson, who became artistic director at the playhouse in January, said he met Miss Lortel 20 years ago after a reading at her theater.

"I thought she was wonderful," he said. "At the end of the reading she made a speech and began to pass around a hat to support the actors."

Miss Lortel, who studied acting and theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and made her Broadway debut in 1925 in the Theater Guild production of "Caesar and Cleopatra," with Helen Hayes as Cleopatra.

After founding the White Barn, Miss Lortel's mission, according to a foundation biography, was to present works "of an unusual and experimental nature, develop the talents of new playwrights, composers, actors, director and designers and to allow established artists to open themselves up to new directions."

Under her direction, the theater premiered plays like "Fam and Yam" by Edward Albee, "Embers" by Samuel Beckett and "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" by Paul Zindel.

In 1992 the White Barn expanded, and Miss Lortel added a museum, which exhibited theatrical memorabilia from its productions and her own appearances on stage. The memorabilia will be moved to the White Barn Center at the playhouse and will be on display at the Lortel museum there.